By now, you’ve surely heard about Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, who was shot in the back by ICE Agents in Austin this weekend while working as a DoorDash delivery driver. This is now the third ICE shooting in Texas since Trump was sworn in. The other two:
Ruben Ray Martinez, who was shot and killed by ICE in South Padre on March 15, 2025. Yet, ICE’s involvement wasn’t known until February 2026.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by ICE agents in Houston on July 7, 2026. Per federal officials, he wasn’t the intended target.
The only other state that has had three ICE shootings has been Minnesota.
We know that under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become increasingly violent. 42 ICE Shootings since January 20, 2025.
While I don’t know the state laws in other states, which may have enabled the ICE violence there, we absolutely know the state laws in Texas, which have handed ICE the officers, the funding, and the legal cover to operate here unchecked. With 43 days until we’re holding our breath that Texas turns blue, we’re also 104 days until the 120th Congressional Session and 113 days until the 90th Legislative Session.
These terrible, anti-democratic, and violent laws passed under Texas Republicans can be reversed. And there are steps Texas can take to protect people who live here from being murdered by the federal government. This starts with knowing which laws did this and exactly who voted for them.
First, the Texas Legislature built the legal scaffolding.
In 2017, the Texas Republicans passed SB4, the anti-sanctuary law, which stripped Texas localities of the ability to limit cooperation with ICE and mandated compliance with detainers. This law was so heinous that it led to a near-fistfight among legislators on the House floor.
This fight erupted after Matt Rinaldi threatened to shoot a Democratic member in the head.
Texas Republicans later elected Matt Rinaldi Chair of the Republican Party of Texas (2021-2024).
This was a white supremacist law, SB4, aimed at inflicting violence on the immigrant community. Republicans knew this because all of the research and data showed how Sanctuary Cities lower crime and save county governments money.
A Center for American Progress statistical analysis found 35.5 fewer crimes per 10,000 people in counties that don’t honor ICE detainers than in counties that do.
A ScienceDirect analysis found no evidence that sanctuary policies increase any crime category, and evidence of a decrease in property crime that strengthens over time after adoption, attributed to rising trust between residents and police.
A Stanford University study found sanctuary policies recorded no crime increase. Those findings were entered into the congressional record specifically to rebut the Trump administration’s public claims.
Colorado State University research estimated that violent-crime reductions from sanctuary policies save county governments $101 million annually nationwide, while honoring ICE detainers costs counties roughly $3.3 billion annually.
These are all well-known facts that have been researched and reported on for more than a decade. But this law still stands in Texas.
This is part of what will allow cities to keep their migrant citizens safe.
Yes, I said “part,” because in 2025 Republicans made it much worse. With Trump back in the White House, the Republican Legislators saw it as their opportunity to inflict more violence on immigrant populations. They passed SB8, mandating 287(g) agreements for every sheriff running a county jail, backed by a state grant program to pay for compliance.
DPS, the Attorney General’s office, and the Texas National Guard signed 287(g) task-force agreements.
Paxton’s office and the National Guard signed in January 2025. DPS followed in November, putting nearly 5,000 commissioned officers, including Highway Patrol, in a position to act as ICE’s statewide force multiplier.
That’s how a DPS trooper ends up assisting a pursuit that ends with an ICE officer putting a bullet in a DoorDash driver’s back. The infrastructure for that hand-off is newer, Republican Legislators built it on purpose.
The 287(g) program has been on the books since 1996, letting ICE deputize state and local officers to do federal immigration enforcement. For most of its life, it was a jail-only program.
The Obama administration killed the task force model in 2012 after years of documented racial profiling. Trump revived it the moment he returned to office.
Texas Republicans built out the largest state-level task force operation in the country to take advantage of it.
January 2025. Paxton’s office and the Texas National Guard sign task force agreements.
June 2025. The Legislature passes SB8, Government Code Chapter 753, which requires sheriffs to consider a 287(g) agreement. §753.051: any sheriff who operates a county jail, or contracts one out, must “request and enter into” an immigration enforcement agreement with ICE. Effective January 1, 2026.
Also in SB8, the Sheriff Immigration Law Enforcement Grant Program, run by the Comptroller, exists to bribe compliance. Counties that sign get state money to cover the cost of turning their deputies into immigration agents. Before SB8, only 35 of 254 counties had bothered with a 287(g) agreement. Republicans didn’t like that number, so they made resistance illegal and paid for compliance simultaneously, both funded by your tax dollars.
November 2025. DPS signs its own task force agreement, separate from SB8 entirely, because DPS doesn’t run a jail and the law didn’t technically require it. Highway Patrol and Criminal Investigations can now stop you on I-35, decide they don’t like your accent, and act as ICE on the spot.
That last one should make you the angriest, because it’s the one nobody forced them to do. The state’s own police force asked to become ICE’s muscle.
DPS is currently being led by Colonel Freeman F. Martin. The Public Safety Commission appoints the DPS Director. The entire Public Safety Commission was appointed by Greg Abbott.
And this is the infrastructure that was built before Sunday. Every link in that chain was a choice Texas Republicans made, on purpose, in the last decade.
A big chunk of Operation Lone Star’s border-security appropriations is underwriting the interior enforcement apparatus.
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, in response to Biden saying Abbott had “Neanderthal thinking.” By the time Biden left office, Texas had spent north of $11 billion of its own money on it.
Then Trump won, and Republicans in Congress built Texas a refund. Buried in the One Big Bullshit Bill is $13.5 billion split across two funds. $10 billion in a State Border Security Reinforcement Fund run through DHS, and $3.5 billion in something Republicans actually named the “BIDEN” fund 🙄. John Cornyn and August Pfluger led the push. Texas asked for the full $11.1 billion.
DHS approved $7.5 billion of it just this month, still $3.6 billion short, and Cornyn himself compared getting it out of the executive branch to “pulling teeth.” Even Republicans’ own signature legislative win couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy Republicans.
That $7.5 billion isn’t tax dollars American immigrants somehow “cost” Texas. It’s a wealth transfer from the national tax base back into the Texas treasury, paid for by taxpayers in all 50 states, for spending Abbott chose to make unilaterally, that a federal court never asked him to make, to build a parallel state immigration-enforcement system the federal government didn’t request and, at the time, was actively suing to stop.
And once that $7.5 billion lands, it isn’t earmarked for anything. It flows into Texas’s general revenue fund as an undesignated reimbursement. There’s no statutory requirement that it goes toward paying down border spending specifically or gets returned to taxpayers in any form.
Operation Lone Star should be immidiately ended and audited. And considering most of it was yet another one of Abbott’s pay-to-play schemes. Legislation should be passed to end the decades of pay-to-play by the top corrupt apparatchiks of our government.
The private detention pipeline is a big piece of this.
Texas hosts a huge share of the country’s ICE detention capacity (Pearsall, Dilley, Karnes, etc.), largely run by GEO Group and CoreCivic under state and local contracts. A blue legislature could bar new state/local contracts with private prison operators for immigration detention, restrict state pension fund (TRS/ERS) holdings in those companies, and use state fire-code, health, and licensing inspections aggressively on existing facilities. Illinois and California both passed laws phasing out private detention contracts entirely.
As of early 2025, Texas held more ICE detainees than any other state, with seven Texas facilities ranking among the top 20 in the country. And it’s about to get worse. ICE’s own internal planning documents show Texas’s detention capacity nearly doubling to roughly 38,000 beds this year, funded by the $45 billion detention budget Congress handed the agency in the same bill that reimbursed Abbott’s border spending.
GEO Group posted a record $254 million profit in 2025, up roughly 700% from 2024, driven largely by new ICE contracts. CoreCivic reported $116.5 million in profit, up nearly 70% year over year. GEO Group’s revenue hit $732.1 million for the year, a 15% jump, and the company’s founder called 2025 “the largest amount of new business we have won in a single year in our company’s history.” ICE contracts make up 41-43% of GEO Group’s total revenue and roughly 30% of CoreCivic’s. Imprisoning immigrants who came here looking for a better life is their business model.
This isn’t the free market responding to a policy Texas Republicans had no control over. GEO Group and CoreCivic actively lobby to keep it this way. Together, they spent $3.1 million lobbying the federal government in 2024 alone. GEO Group’s PAC was the first corporate PAC to max out contributions to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Both companies doubled their 2017 inaugural donations, giving $500,000 each to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee. And border czar Tom Homan was reportedly on GEO Group’s consultant payroll before returning to government.
CoreCivic’s Dilley facility, the South Texas Family Residential Center, 2,400 beds, where fathers are routinely separated from mothers and children, has been described by detainees as a measles-infested “living hell,” serving moldy food and putrid water. Company-wide, GEO Group has faced lawsuits over inadequate medical care, wrongful deaths, and forced labor; three detainees at a GEO-run Washington facility recently sued, alleging guards sexually assaulted and beat them, then covered it up. An ACLU analysis found 95% of deaths in ICE detention between 2017 and 2021 were preventable or possibly preventable due to inadequate medical care. CoreCivic currently leads the country in in-custody deaths. Your tax dollars, funneled through state contracts, subsidize this.
Texas Republicans did this, on purpose, in public, with their names on the votes.
Texas Republicans have become a small number of people who found out that manufacturing fear of your neighbors is profitable, legislated that fear into a statewide enforcement apparatus, and took campaign checks from the companies that profit off it.
So do something about it.
Every law in this piece was a choice made by people whose names are on file with the Texas Secretary of State. Many of them are on a ballot, some for the Legislature, some for Congress, others for Comptroller and Land Commissioner. All of them are Republican. The Legislature convenes again in 113 days. Every seat in the Texas House and half the Senate is up in November.
Texas didn’t do this to itself. Texas Republicans did it. Forty-three days out. Every name on those bills is a name on a ballot. Vote accordingly.
43 days until the November election!
Last Day to Register to Vote: October 5, 2026
First Day of Early Voting: October 19, 2026
Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail: October 23, 2026
Last Day of Early Voting: October 30, 2026
Election Day: November 3, 2026
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Matt Rinaldi… just add him to the list of villains. And unfortunately I know him too well, another homegrown villain from North Texas.
And Gina Hinojosa could appoint a completely new Public Safety Commission?